


toy soldiers before the rust

by mushydesserts



Series: (the only light we'll see) [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Character Study, F/M, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Survival, Unlikely meetings, a bit of outdoor sex, former soldiers chatting over cup noodles, i feel like only i would write this, one-night stand
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-06
Updated: 2017-05-06
Packaged: 2018-10-28 20:59:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10839339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mushydesserts/pseuds/mushydesserts
Summary: "Always thought it was strange that you Lucian folks trained child soldiers.""What, and it isn't strange that you Niffs engineered your troopers from kids?" Yeah, he's offended. She never did get the full story about the blond one.She holds up her hands. "Hey, I'm not judging. And I never liked what Besithia was doing. I defected, remember?"He shoots her a glance but settles down. "Doesn't matter," he says flatly. "Wasn't enough."An ex-Imperial Commodore and an ex-Lucian Shield kill daemons, eat cup noodles, and try to survive at the end of the world. (Kinkmeme fill.)





	toy soldiers before the rust

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](https://ffxv-kinkmeme.dreamwidth.org/3451.html?thread=3291771#cmt3291771).
> 
> I always wanted these two to have a conversation.
> 
> Takes place in the World of Ruin.

 

 

Smash. Crash. Sixty-three daemons.

Crunch. Sixty-four. Swish. Sixty-five.

Wait — sixty-four and a half. Gods damn.

She swings her spear back and blinks the sweat out of her eyes. The swirl of daemons coming at her is growing, if that's even possible — creatures descending from the dark sky, coming out of the woodwork to see what the matter is, to try to claim any prey their fallen comrades had failed to snag. They scrabble out of the rocky hills, clambering around the twisted branches of old trees with unholy screeching and clicking. Unluckily for them, this specific prey had been hunting down their ilk since they were just a twinkle in the dear old Starscourge's eye. Not the daemons' lucky day.

Still, there better be a haven at the end of this road. Her spear could use a sharpening, there's less than half a bottle of Niff enhancers left, and her flashlight needs new batteries.

She's getting too old for this shit.

Panting, she takes a moment, and then makes a last push towards the top of the nearby cliff. Hopefully she'll be able to get her bearings from the higher ground.

The sixty-fifth daemon is a hobgoblin, as are sixty-six through seventy-one. She ducks a swing from an iron giant, slices a lich in two — damn lichs. There's a tonberry. Gods. She legs it.

She swings her spear in a wide arc, hearing bones crack and soft tissue squelch. Something wet splashes against her arms. She doesn't think about what it might be. Somewhere to her right there's a terrible groaning roar, and she hopes against hope that two daemons have gotten into some sort of spat and it's drawing the attention away from her.

She spots an opening. She impales a goblin on the end of her polearm, flings the corpse behind her, and makes a break for it.

She's almost there. The gravel slips beneath her feet, and the palm of her hand lands in grit; she ignores the sting and pulls herself up again. She parries something that flies at her, stabs an imp through, sweeps a skeleton away. Just a little further...

She reaches the top of the ridge just in time for a blinding flash of blue light to catch her in the face. She throws her arms up.

Shit, shit, shit. Necromancer. Or worse, _Sir Tonberry._ Fuck.

She swings her spear around without even looking, ready to block or die trying. No point trying for precision now.

As the spots fade from her vision, she's suddenly glad she didn't bother to aim.

At the end of her spear, nearly as muddied and bloodied and bewildered as she imagines she must be, are a man's surprised brown eyes. A broadsword has come to a stop mere inches from her nose. The flashlight clipped to his jacket cuts through the gloom with a steadier beam than she's seen in days.

They stand frozen, staring at each other.

"Holy fucking shit," Aranea breathes.

An unnatural howling shakes both of them out of their stupor. She whirls to take out another daemon, and the man does the same behind her.

"Come on! Haven this way," he says, and gestures for her to follow as he takes off down the slope.

Aranea doesn't have to be told twice. She sprints after him.

\---

Cup noodles. Fucking reconstituted noodles in a styrofoam cup have never tasted so good.

Aranea drains her cup of salty broth and ignores the whine and yelp of some daemon prodding at the barrier behind her. Her companion breaks another stick and tosses it into the tiny campfire.

She wipes her mouth and unabashedly licks her fingers. She sets down the cup with a sigh. "Thanks for the meal," she says.

"No problem," he says. "Sorry. I didn't have anything more substantial."

"Are you kidding me? This is the best thing I've had in months."

He grins, surprised. "You're a woman after my own heart," he says.

She leans back on her hand. "Gladio, right? Haven't seen you since... eh. Can't recall."

"A year and a half ago," he says. He frowns. "North hunter HQ. As far as I can remember."

"Who'd have thought I'd find you out here, huh?" She surveys the wasteland around them. Who'd have thought she'd find anybody out here? But here he is, in his shabby leather getup, all faded tattoos and gruff little ponytail and none the worse for wear. If anybody could hack it, she guesses it'd be this kid. "What happened to you?"

He grunts. "Hunting party got killed." She winces. No pulling punches there. But then they're all getting too used to losing people. Maybe it's too much effort to be delicate about it now. "You?"

"Airship broke down," she says.

"Any other survivors?"

"Nada." She'd left the other crew member's remains in the wreckage miles ago. Good pilot, way too young.

He nods. Not a surprise. "Where were you headed?"

She sighs, stretches out. "Out to Ravatogh, originally, but now? Nearest outpost stat for me."

"You know where it is?"

"No fuckin' clue, actually."

He cracks a smile. "Ten klicks," he informs her.

"Which way?"

He taps the rock to their three o' clock. "It's an estimate," he says.

Who knows, he means. They'll make it or they won't.

They rest five hours and start off again.

\---

They manage to avoid most of the daemons by picking their way along on a ledge close to the cliffside. There are flying creatures above, and things shuffling and sniffing for warm blood in the dead shrubbery below, but as long as she covers their back and he covers their front, they're not doing too badly.

"Ran into your little sister the other day," she says during a break. She fixes her ponytail, scratches the back of her neck. "Or not-so-little anymore, I guess." Iris Amicitia, daemon-slayer. She's now older than Aranea herself was when she started out. Fully capable young woman, hunter and soldier, with a roundhouse kick that could send a spiracorn flying. When did twenty-year-olds start looking like children to her?

"Yeah," he says, faint pride and tiredness warring in the single syllable. He avoids her gaze, inspecting a scratch in his sword. "She doing okay?"

Aranea sends him a side-glance. "She's your sister. Shouldn't you know?"

Silence. He scowls at her, dismayed.

She sighs. "She's fine. Misses her big brother. She says she doesn't worry about you though, because you know what you're doing, and you wouldn't dare sully the family name by getting yourself maimed or killed or something out here by yourself."

He rolls his eyes. "Feh," he says, fond.

"I'm not gonna have to tell her she was wrong, am I?"

"Not a chance," he says.

"Good. I didn't live into my middle-age to be gutted by the entire remaining populace of Lucis for breaking the daemon-slayer's heart."

"You don't have to worry. She'd gut me herself if I didn't come back."

"So both our necks are on the line?" She tosses her spear from one hand to the other. "You'd better live through this."

"We'll be fine. I've got you at my back, don't I?"

"Flatterer."

\---

"What happened to the other two?" he says, when they get to the next camp.

"Biggs and Wedge?" She's momentarily tempted to tell him they're dead just to see if he'd look guilty for asking. But he's so hesitant and lifeless in the eyes already that she doesn't have the heart. "Still Biggin' and Wedgin', I guess. They're back at home base coordinating transport."

He chuckles. "You gonna chew them out for stranding you when you get back?"

When. She takes off a glove to shake it out. "Right, as if. More like they're gonna chew me out for wrecking yet another airship. Those things are hard to come by these days."

"Who'd have thought there'd be a time when we'd run low on those things," he says, straight-faced.

She jabs a finger at him. "Don't act all innocent. How many of those things are you personally responsible for wrecking? I'm gonna say high seventies, low eighties?"

He deflects. "Hey, I ain't a ranged fighter. Always preferred to keep my feet on the ground myself."

She scoffs. "I've seen you take out entire platoons with one swing. If that ain't a range I don't know what is."

He doesn't deny this, removing one boot to empty the sand out of it. "You were with the Imperial army," he says neutrally instead.

She nods. "Captain of the Third Army Corps, 86th Airborne Unit." It's been a long time since she'd held that rank.

"How long did it take you to get there?"

"Not that long," she says. "Got in right at the top. Hired out of private military. Not a lot of people could do what I did, I guess."

"Huh," he says. "And there I was thinking that being born into a job would help me avoid the rank-and-file."

That's right. He was a soldier, military family. "So what, were you a kid when you started out?"

He rests an arm on his knee. "Not officially. But yeah, me and Iggy, though he was with a different service." Iggy, with the specs and the poison. Now there's one to watch out for.

She considers her response. "Always thought it was strange that you Lucian folks trained child soldiers." And nobility, too. She was just a kid when she started out as a merc, but at least she chose the job, and it wasn't like anybody could stop her from quitting before she enlisted.

"What, and it isn't strange that you Niffs engineered your troopers from kids?" Yeah, he's offended. She never did get the full story about the blond one.

She holds up her hands. "Hey, I'm not judging. And I never liked what Besithia was doing. I defected, remember?"

He shoots her a glance but settles down. "Doesn't matter," he says flatly. "We were losing for a long time. And it wasn't enough."

For either of them, he means. None of what Lucis did, none of what the Empire did; none of what the Caelums did, nor what the Aldercapts did; no soldiers, mercs, magiteks, guards, hunters, fathers or children; nothing Aranea Highwind or Gladiolus Amicitia did — none of it mattered in the end.

She looks at the sky. "Lucis is still doing better than Niflheim," she says. She'll probably never see the streets where she grew up again.

Something in her voice must give her away, because there's some compassion in his gaze when she turns back to him.

"Guess nobody won this one," he says.

She sets her watch alarm for two hours. They lay on the rock, arms over their eyes, trying to doze.

\---

A considerable trek later, and they find themselves at the top of a drop-off, staring off the edge into a deep gorge.

"Ah, shit," she says.

He shifts his grip on his sword and nods out into the distance. "Well," he says, "At least we know we're headed in the right direction." They can see the lights of an outpost cutting through the fog on the horizon across the way, even if there's no obvious way to get there from this particular spot.

She sighs. "Guess we're doubling back," she says. On-foot navigation's just one more thing that's gone to hell since the dark. She'd kill to be back on her airship.

He grimaces and rubs his shoulder. "Let's break," he says.

She leans heavily on her polearm. "Agreed," she says.

\---

There's no haven on the top of the godsforsaken rock, but they're high up enough that roaming things aren't finding their way here. They find a dip in the rock with an overhang that might be called a cave.

"We'll take turns on watch," he says, sitting on a boulder as she clears twigs and bones from the ground.

"Sure," she says, flopping over gingerly with her arms behind her head. She's unlikely to sleep, but he should have the chance to if he needs.

She takes the opportunity to study him. He looks worn now, new lines and stubble, permanent frown. He's older — they all are, that's a given, but she remembers him as being relatively fresh-faced. Not that they'd really had the chance to get to know each other, way back then.

"You know, I remember the first time I met you bunch," she says.

"When you tried to kill us?" he says.

"No, not — " she rolls her eyes. "That was me on the job. I meant officially."

"Eh. Sure." He has a ghost of a smirk.

"You weren't there," she points out.

He stretches his legs out. "I did notice the guys couldn't stop talking about you when I came back. Charmed their pants off while I was away?"

"Yeah, dinner and flowers and everything. You definitely missed out," she says. She rolls onto her side. "Funny. The whole time we were picking our way through the Vesperpool, they wouldn't shut up about you."

"Is that so."

"Yeah. 'Where's the Big Guy?' 'Too bad Gladio isn't here.' 'Has he texted you?' Like clingy lovebirds. They weren't really sure why you took off."

"Huh."

Seems he's not about to share now either. "They were a lot happier when you were around," she says.

He glances at her. "We were a lot happier back then in general," he says, finally.

"Wouldn't have thought."

"What? Is that strange?"

"Normally? No." She rolls onto her back again, staring up at the rock. "But considering we'd just executed an attack that took out more than a few family members of yours, leveled your hometown and ended Lucian sovereign rule, I'm kind of surprised." Wacky kids and their wacky roadtrip and all. She'd seen how desperate they were when they _fought_ , all rage and hurt and panic and tossing back energy drinks like shots, but then she'd gone camping with them and heard them bicker and whine and laugh like a bunch of schoolboys, and she'd forgot they were supposed to be dangerous. The enemy.

He shakes his head. "You might be a free spirit and all," he says. "But this," he jerks his head out over the gorge to indicate the dead trees, the black water and the glow of daemons far below. "This ain't much to write home about."

She keeps her eyes trained on the cliffside. She'd seen his Prince pose for _faux-sexy photos_. "Then why are you out here hunting in the ass-end of nowhere all the damn time instead of back in town with your people?"

He sets down his sword. "Ramuh's beard," he mutters with the air of a man who's heard something too many times. He doesn't answer.

She guesses it really is none of her business, but she's always been nosy, and she's getting old anyway. Old people are allowed to nag, right?

She thinks about the last time she saw these boys — really saw them, together. It must've been somewhere in Cleigne, a stop-by during a flyover in the early hours of the morning. She'd always known what to look for when she scanned the landscape from above. Nobody else was crazy enough to take on the daemons _and_ the Imperials at once back then, and the flare of magic was hard to miss in the night.

She'd seen them again in Tenebrae, but not really. They were down a member by then, and the other three weren't really the same. And then Gralea had happened, and everything had gone to shit.

She thinks about Biggs and Wedge, their hodgepodge accents yelling over poker games and their awful taste in liquor, _You're out I'm out — same here, we ain't nothin' without our Lady, are we?,_ and thinks maybe this was a bad time to be born caring about people.

She's gentle about it now. "Guess it was different back then, huh?" she says. "When the Kinglet was around."

He doesn't reply to that either, face turned away and stare fixed stubbornly on the horizon. That's fine. She wasn't expecting him to. She turns over and tries to get some shut-eye.

She's almost drifted off to sleep by the time he speaks again, so soft she's not sure she heard it.

"He'll be back," he says.

She doesn't say anything. She's seen enough people who have lost too much to know that one little lie can't hurt if it keeps you going.

\---

As they're picking their way down the mountainside, she says, apropos to nothing, "You know what I miss?"

He looks at her, brow raised.

She shakes off her spear. "The ulwaat berry shakes from The Crow's Nest," she says.

He huffs. "You had those too, huh? Bet there wasn't a single ulwaat berry in that sludge."

"Yeah, but they were so good!"

He shakes his head. "I miss sea salt ice cream," he says after a pause.

She snickers. "What are you, five?"

"Tell me you wouldn't go for one now," he protests.

"Yeah, but..." She debates saying this. "I might know someone who still makes it."

He makes a dismissive noise. "Is it that Tilmitt kid out in Caem? It don't taste the same."

"Oh, come on, it's better than nothing!" She hacks a branch out of her way. "I miss summer fireworks. Best waste of explosives we ever devised."

He ducks to avoid the branch as it snaps back. "I miss the Gralea Press House."

"Gods, same! Will we ever know if Special Agent Crystal Fire ends up with Falcio The Dashing Pirate King, or with her wealthy childhood friend with the dark past?"

He grins. "Ain't no way to disappoint the fans if we never find out."

So he _can_ still crack a joke. "I miss catching foreign stations on the radio. Nothing better than shouting along incomprehensibly to some Galahdian hit at four in the morning in the showers." To the _eternal consternation_ of her men, if she recalls.

"I miss angle fishing," he says. Then he grumbles, "Never thought I'd see the day."

She kind of gets that. Boredom is still a constant, but being bored outdoors in the fresh air isn't the same as being bored in a bunker with no sunlight and half a dozen refugees. "I miss having privacy."

"You had privacy in the army?"

"I was an officer and most of my subordinates were men, so, yeah. I had my space. But even the rest got days off."

He makes a face. "So it's not so bad out here," he says gamely.

They're still miles outside of anything that could be called civilization, their flashlights the only working illumination, and even the old water towers and broken-down warehouses they come across every so often have been mostly flattened. There's roaring and growling all around them. Somewhere ahead of them, the blue glow of the campsite they're approaching signals the only patch of refuge they'll find until they make it to the outpost (or don't).

She glances at him. Side-eye. Up and down.

"I don't know," she says flippantly. "It's still been way too long since I got laid."

He stops to look at her. She smiles.

It's a gamble that pays off when she finds herself with the campsite rock digging into her bare spine, her heels in his back, his tongue curled against her and his fingers pressed knuckle-deep inside her. He writhes with his hand on her thigh, and she comes hard enough that she thinks she might have pulled something.

Still got it.

\---

It takes another good couple hours, but they make it to the outpost, feeling their way along the overgrown road leading up to the blockades.

They drag themselves up to the gate, squinting under the floodlights. Gladio waves an arm at the guards posted at the top of the fence. There's a shout, and then the gate starts to creak open.

"I'll be damned," she says as they're ushered in. She's half-relieved and half-incredulous. "We made it."

"Was there ever a doubt?" He solemnly raises his fist, and normally Aranea wouldn't, but this is definitely a fistbump moment. She taps her knuckles against his.

Someone goes for the water and first-aid supplies they keep at the station, and a guard comms their leader about the new arrivals, yeah, two of them, yeah, on foot, no, no idea how they made it, no sign of Scourge, they're healthy and they speak and everything, but we'll check. Aranea undoes her hair and grimaces when she tries to run her fingers through it. The twigs and the dried gunk are going to call for some heavy soaking.

"Plans?" Gladio says, unstrapping his wrist guard with a wince.

"Gotta get in touch with home base before I gotta break up the funeral." Knowing the guys, that would probably just consist of saving a bottle of good liquor. "You?"

"I should call up Dave." She makes a face in sympathy, thinking of the hunters and the next-of-kin that'll have to be notified. That'll be fun. "But I think I'll hit the showers first."

She nods. There doesn't seem to be anything else to talk about, so she says, "Say hi to Iris and the boys for me. And gimme a shout if you ever need a lift."

He gives her a wry half-smile before heading out back to the barracks. "I will."

 

(He never does.)

\---

The day the sun rises again, Aranea will squint at it in disbelief for way too long.

She will mutter, "Well, shit."

She will let out a small laugh.

Ain't the first time she was wrong about something.

 

 


End file.
